Health service IT timetable released

The new five-year NHS IT strategy places technology at the centre of health service modernisation.

The National Programme, 'Delivering 21st Century IT Support for the NHS' was officially published last week.

The strategy outlines how part of the extra £40bn for the NHS announced in the Budget will translate into reality.

The document fails to mention specific figures but assumes 'significant new levels of funding' in place from April 2003. The Treasury-backed Wanless report published in April recommended health service IT budgets be ring-fenced and doubled to £2bn per year. As revealed by Computing (6 June), Health secretary Alan Milburn has asked for an extra £5bn for IT over five years, but no announcements will be made until the summer, after the current round of departmental Spending Reviews.

The first step in the strategy is to push NHS IT higher up the political ladder. Department of Health (DoH) minister Lord Hunt is to lead a newly-created ministerial taskforce. Implementation will be the job of Sir John Pattison, DoH IT research and development director, and a national IT programme director will be appointed.

This chain of command will take political and practical responsibility for the four core priorities of the programme: the development of high-speed broadband infrastructure, electronic patient records, booking and prescribing applications.

NHS staff can expect at least 128kbps connections by 2005, with 2mbps between regional trusts and across NHSNet gateways, says the report. A broadband NHS Net is due to be purchased to replace current contracts when they expire in 2004.

Key short term targets for 2002-3 include connecting all staff to the NHS network, developing electronic transfer for test results and defining the specifications for national applications. The first standards will be published in July, as will details of a new centralised procurement strategy.

By 2005 the DoH expects electronic bookings to be fully implemented and electronic prescription services to be at least 50 per cent in place.

By December 2007 full electronic health records should be up and running and telemedicine applications beginning to be available for GPs to consult with experts.

The programme acknowledges that IT is vital to health service modernisation.NHS Information Authority chief executive Gwyn Thomas told Computing: 'We now have recognition that IT is not an optional extra but is essential to the workings of the NHS.

'At the same time we have to recognise the enormity of the task and not underestimate the effort and resources needed to deliver one of the largest single IT programmes in the world.'

Addenbrooke's hospital deputy chief pharmacist Will Willson said: 'The vision is good and the strategy is right but there's not very much about how people will deal with these new IT systems.

'There's a lot of flashy IT out there but if staff don't or can't use it, or it is used to support processes that are bureaucratic and not amenable to change, then we can spend all the money we like but the IT will fail to deliver.'